Oxigen bets big on MicroATM business

Oxigen intends to increase installations of such devices by 100-fold within three years, now that there's clarity on the charges that banks must pay each other for using this facility.Pratik Bhakta | ET Bureau | May 16, 2017, 10:15 IST

Digital payments company Oxigen is betting on the microATM business to get customers in semi-urban and rural areas to start transacting without cash and intends to increase installations of such devices 100-fold within three years, now that there's clarity on the charges that banks must pay each other for using this facility.

"We have already deployed around 10,000 machines and have plans to take this number to 10 lakh by three years," said Pramod Saxena, chairman of Oxigen."Further, the devices are showing on an average 2 lakh transactions per month per machine. With all the added features on microATMs, the number of transactions can easily be doubled up."

MicroATMs are devices that are similar to the swipe machines found at retail outlets. In addition to supporting credit and debit card payments, these terminals allow customers to withdraw cash from the merchant, pay utility bills and transfer funds.

With the interchange fees on microATMs - the rate that banks must pay for using each other's facilities - decided by the National Payments Corporation of India, companies such as Oxigen plan to go full throttle to capture the rural and semi-urban digital payments market.

"We are targeting that section of the population which would first need to be made comfortable using their cards for payments at merchant point-of-sale terminals instead of using it on the mobile phones for net banking transactions directly ," said Saxena.

Oxigen is providing merchants with an extra share of revenue per transaction. The company further pays a small amount to the retailer for a digital bill payment as a share of the revenue it earns from the biller.